Evolving Beyond API Service Providers and Tools to Goal Based API Toolkits

As the universe of APIs expands, I’m working to find new ways that I can discover, educate myself, then organize information around the most meaningful areas in the API space. As part of this effort I’m reorganizing API Evangelist site into a network of small story groups, so that I can focus on a specific piece of this expanding API universe.

Each portion of API Evangelist will run using what I call my Hacker Storytelling format, where I use Github Page, Jekyll along with a variety of JSON driven widgets that tell a story around a specific topic.

The first story group I’m tackling is redefining two of my main sections which I had called “service provider” and “tools”. My original intent was to find resources people could use to deploy APIs, and if it was an online service I put it in service providers and if you could download and install, it went under tools.

I’m abandoning this approach and dismantling these sections and breaking them into goal oriented stories:

I don't have evangelism, monetization or consumption ready to go yet, but design, deployment, management and discovery are coming together nicely. You will be able to get at news, analysis, services and tools within these areas, as well as some overall thoughts about each area of the API universe.

I'm doing this to help me focus on each aspect of the API space, allowing me to see just the news and the best of the companies who are active in that area. This approach really helps me curate and write very focused stories and white papers that serve each topic. I hope it offers similar value for you.

My objective is to allow people to find information from two main areas, either using APIs or providing APIs. You can then navigate to individual areas within those two goal areas, with some overlap between them. In addition to toolkits for using or providing APIs, I'm also rolling out other story groups in the areas of API trends, priorities and opportunities.

So stay tuned…API Evangelist is always a living research project.